


One Moose-Take After the Other

by utcrypticiores



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bad Jokes, Gen, Human Bill Cipher, Magic, Older Dipper Pines, Older Mabel Pines, moose puns, moose realated puns, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:58:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3714103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utcrypticiores/pseuds/utcrypticiores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper and Mabel go looking for a magical creature in the book who they think is small, but turns out to be huge. Bill tags along in his human form to mess with them, (he just wants to watch them suffer), and makes some unforgivably horrible attempts at humor. Third summer at Gravity Falls. Flagrant use of moose related puns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Moose-Take After the Other

Dipper Pines scrambled up the nearest tree, his fingers sore and bloody from clawing at the bark, his legs torn up from the knot of blackberry thorns below, and his heart hammering out of his chest. Climb. Climb I’m going to die. Just a little higher. 

Half blind with panic, he managed to collapse onto a somewhat stable branch which he clung to for dear life, his attention turning from climbing just a little higher to the drop beneath him, should this branch break. Oh, and the raging demonic moose creature that was rearing up to rip him to shreds. Or tear out his soul, or remove his eyes, or whatever it was that hell moose did when they caught their targets. Dipper wasn’t too keen on finding out. God I hope they don’t teach moose how to climb trees in Hell. Or wherever this thing came from. Luckily for the Pines, they didn’t. The twelve foot tall, jet black moose, with beady red eyes and flaming antlers scuffed it’s hooves restlessly against the ground, eyes locked on Dipper. Every so often, it reared up to rip at the tree with it’s dinner-plate sized hooves, making horrible echoing moaning noises that caused Dipper to cling to the tree and add possible heart-attack to the list of things that could kill him in this situation. He was so very, very, screwed. 

A call signalled from just above him in the tree, his sister Mabel, doing an over-dramatized bird call. Dipper managed to shift his head far enough to the side to be able to spy up at her, who was far less bothered by the whole situation than Dipper was. She had had the sense to climb a tree when she saw the red eyes and sound of hoof steps. Dipper hadn’t shared her insight. Finally, he calmed down just a fraction enough to form actual words. 

“Mabel,” He hissed, “What are you doing? We have no one to signal.” 

“SCRREEEEEE CAW CAW CAW SCREEEEE.” She paused for breath and looked down at him smartly from where she sat perched on a tree branch, with a metallic-blue sweater and her brown hair pulled back behind her. “I am signalling for the pacific meadowlark, the only creature capable of calming the hell-moose you decided to summon. That’s what it said in the journal. At least, I think so.” She then returned to her shrieking. The journal itself was in his backpack, lost somewhere on the forest floor. The reminder made Dipper feel even worse than he already did, and his stomach gave an awful twist feeling in response. 

With his twin sister screeching above him, and a twelve foot tall, red eyed beast below him, he started to piece together a plan.

 

And to think, this day had started out so promisingly. 

 

Earlier that day, Dipper had been sitting on the ledge outside the window of his room, paging through the journal in the early morning light and looking for something interesting and non-life threatening to go after. It was his and his sister’s third summer spent in Gravity Falls, and by now it felt more like home than home did. Chasing monsters, dealing with ghosts… this was where he belonged. Sure, it wasn’t all pleasant, but banishing a screaming head was a lot more interesting than sitting through a pre-algebra class. At this point, he felt like he could handle himself in some pretty tough situations. This was his first mistake. 

 

After a few minutes of flipping through pages, they started turned by themselves, like a wind had blown through. The thing was, there wasn’t any breeze. Dipper felt a shiver, then looked down, where the journal had been opened to a page he hadn’t seen before, glowing with a strange blue light. Dipper blinked and rubbed his eyes and the light was gone. He blamed it on his imagination. Second mistake. 

It was a short entry. No name, with a quick hand drawn sketch of what appeared to be a tiny moose, with fluttering wings, standing next to a sapling for scale, (or at least, what Dipper thought was a sapling). There was a short description on approximately where they lived and what to do if he came across one. The author didn’t seem to have a ton of info, but they seemed harmless. Dipper marked the page and climbed back inside the Mystery Shack. 

It seemed like the perfect find. Dipper could’ve sworn he heard something like laughter from outside, but he convinced himself it was just in his head. This was the next mistake. 

 

Back in the tree, Dipper had formulated something of a plan, and Mabel was taking a break from bird-song to listen to him. “Okay. So, if I can make it to the next tree, I might be able to push that reasonably large boulder onto Hell Moose here. It might kill it.” Mabel’s mouth twisted to one side sceptically.

“Or it would make it angry, if you could get to that tree in the first place. We’re kind of boxed in here, Dipper.”

The moose below them bellowed smoke and stamped menacingly, circling the tree. Dipper risked a glance downward and saw the jet-black, twelve foot tall ball of razor sharp antlers and hatred. His shoulders slumped. Mabel was right. They both held on tight as the tree shuddered and pine needles rained down, the roots making awful cracking sounds as they ripped apart with the strain. They didn’t have much longer before the moose just ripped the tree out of the ground. Dipper leaned forward in defeat, his forehead pressed against the cool, rough bark of the tree. He searched his mind for ways out. This was such a weird way to die. He couldn’t help but imagine Grunkle Stan trying to explain away the issue to their parents in Piedmont. But that was the least of his worries at the moment. A better question: Did Hell Moose sleep?

As if in response to his thoughts, a familiar, magically amplified voice exploded into Dipper’s eardrums: “Of COURSE that thing doesn’t sleep! Good luck finding your way out of this mess, Pine Tree!” Dipper let out a sudden scream of surprise and almost fell out of the tree, arms flailing to keep hold of the branches, his heart beating out of his chest again. His display was greeted with loud, ear-gratingly annoying laughter. 

Mabel let out something like a nervous laugh, and Dipper scrunched his eyes shut to try to get his heart beat down.

The dream demon, Bill Cipher, had been jumping in and out of their lives since their first meeting, two summers ago. In their interactions since the “incident” at Mabel’s Sock Opera, he’d chosen to take on a human form while interacting with the twins, in the hopes of appearing less menacing. This didn’t work in the slightest, which was probably related to the fact that he was a trickster, a being of pure energy, and just an overall menacing guy. He hadn’t seriously harmed them in years, but when he showed up, nothing went well. 

“Bill, this is not the time. I give you the free pass to intrude on my life any other time, just not today.” Dipper opened his eyes to see Bill was hovering just a few inches from him, which caused Dipper to draw back in annoyance. The minor details of Bill’s appearance tended to shift a little with each meeting, but he appeared now as a well dressed guy a few years older than the Pines Twins, wearing all yellow and black, and with a triangle eye-patch and uneven black and yellow hair. He winked his golden eye, staring amusedly at Dipper. (Or was that a blink? It was hard to tell). 

“Relax, kids. I’m here to make you an offer. I’m feeling generous today, and I could get you out of this faster than you could say ‘rising power of one eyed lizard birds’. That is, if I wanted to.”

Dipper decided it was better to just not ask about the bird thing. He also knew that if there was one thing about Bill that stayed the same, it was that he didn’t do anything for free. 

Mabel crossed her arms, then quickly uncrossed then as the tree started shaking again. “And what makes us think you’d do that?”

“Well, all powerful dream demon, you know. I can do a lot of things.” He examined the back of one of his gloved hand idly, speaking now to Mabel. “So, Shooting Star, what do you think. Want to make a deal?” Mabel looked tempted for a moment, then thought better of it. 

“No way, Bill. You just want to steal Dipper’s body again, or turn us into screaming heads or something.” Bill shrugged, rolling his visible eye down to look at the moose again. Dipper scowled at him. Bill was wearing a grin full of too-sharp teeth, obviously far too pleased with himself. 

“It would be a fair trade. You don’t want to make any more moose-takes, do you?” 

“‘Moose-takes’? Really? That’s low, even for a body stealing sociopath triangle.”

Bill let out a far too loud stream of raucous laughter, further aggravating the monster below them. He winked again (or blink, whatever) and held his hands like guns, snapping and pointing one hand to Dipper and the other up to Mabel. Dipper was starting to hate this guy even more than before. (Finger pistols?! Really?)

“Get out, Bill.”

“At least listen to my deal.” Before Dipper or Mabel could interrupt him, both their mouths were magically sealed shut. (What a dirt bag). “I send one of you back for free, and the other has to do one simple task for me. I promise I’m not moose-leading you. What do you say?”

Dipper’s mouth was un-stuck, and he glared at the demon. “We are perfectly capable people. No thanks.”

Bill held up his hands as if to say, “What can I do?” and disappeared with a tip of his hat. Dipper had a moment of relief before he heard Bill’s disembodied voice, speaking like he was in Dipper’s head. “Pick your poison, Pines. It’s me or the moose.” With a sudden ripping noise, the branch disappeared from underneath him, sending him and Mabel down toward the freak of nature that was the fiery black winged moose. Dipper felt like his stomach was falling at a faster pace than the rest of him, and as the air was ripped from his lungs and he flailed his arms in an attempt to slow down, his life flashed before his eyes. Just as his mind went blank, he remembered just what got him into this mess. 

 

He and Mabel had made it pretty deep into the forest outside the Mystery Shack on their way to the moose, Mabel running ahead and holding all of the lizards she could get her hands on, taking pictures, and talking about nothing in particular, and Dipper kept his head in a book most of the time, trying to identify the plants along their path. According to the journal, the little moose creature (or so they thought at the time) was found where moving water and the drooping fern met. That didn’t seem too difficult. Sure enough, after about a half an hour of searching, they just sort of came across it, following the clear cut path they were on. What an odd coincidence. 

Dipper read out the simple summoning chant, “Absconditus, consumo, espiritu, salsa .” (That can’t be real Latin, could it?) All at once, the ground shook, the river parted, and the red eyed winged hell spawn emerged from a part in the trees on the other side of the stream, staring down to meet Dipper’s eyes. This was probably the biggest moose-take of all-- (or mistake, he meant. Damn Bill and his horrible sense of humour.) 

This was, of course, the same fiery raging moose that Dipper was now speeding toward faster than his mind could fully process what was going on. He had accepted his fate, death at the hands of a demon moose, along with his sister, as a sadistic Dorito watched and laughed. The total fall was probably less than a second, but he blacked out before it was over. 

 

The moment he fell unconscious, time appeared to stop. His fall pulled to a halt, the color blanched from his surroundings, and Bill, who had appeared just below Dipper, grinned even more maniacally than before. Dipper flailed his arms, feeling an odd sickness as he stopped being aware of his own heartbeat and the feeling in his stomach came to a halt. Dipper didn’t even need to hear his pitch. He stuck out a hand toward the demon. “I don’t care, I don’t care about the consequences. Just save Mabel.” Bill grabbed his hand and in a flash of blue flame, Dipper found himself in full color, choking on his own spit and falling face first on the hard ledge outside his window. The pain from his fall was almost unbearable, but he was very much alive and felt a thrill, even as he tried to sit up and realized at least one bone was broken. Waking up in a flurry a few feet across was Mabel, catching herself just before she fell off the edge. Her eyes were wild, and as she jumped up in confusion, a dead rat fell from the sky, landing neatly in her hands. On it’s stomach was scratched the words: “You’re welcome.” 

Bill sat between them, his legs dangling off the edge of the shack. He tossed back his head and spoke to them without looking at either of them. 

He was far too calm for someone who had banished a creature and teleported two children in a matter of seconds, but what else was new? 

“You know what? You two are fun to mess around with. I’ll make this one a freebie. Consider it a warning not to get in my way later, kid.” He turned around to face Dipper, far too close for comfort, and without breaking eye contact, dropped a dead rat in Dipper’s hands as well, then slid himself off the roof. Dipper lurched forward to see where he’d fallen, but there was no one there. 

Dipper stared down at the dead rat in his hands, reading the message written on it’s back, “That deal was no moose-take”. Dipper didn’t hesitate before tossing it off the roof. He was starting to really hate puns.


End file.
